Friday, March 1, 2013

First Platoon of Panhards

Hey all!

So for today I've got the first 3 Panhards of my French Early War reconnaissance army. I'm painting this up for an early war tournament at Huzzah Hobbies up near Dulles Airport here in Northern Virginia.

The Panhard is a pretty sweet little guy. A wheeled unit, with a solid gun, armor that isn't 0 and it looks freaking cool.

I've always wanted to do an armored car company (well a couple, as the mid-war Brits have some sweet machines as well) and the upcoming event has given me the perfect excuse to do so.

So what about the history of the Panhard? Well, i'm glad you asked. Wikipedia just told me that the nick name of the AMD Panhard 178 was the Pan-Pan... I likely won't ever call it that.

The little guy had a solid top speed of about 44 miles per hour, was armed with a 25mm Cannon and a co-axial machine gun to mow down all those fleeing Germans (right...)

Pew Pew

She was a pretty expensive and modern little lass for her time with a silenced turret and a production cost higher than many light tanks.

The battlefront version is much cheaper, about 12 bucks a pop, talk about economy of scale! (Get it?) And it was a snap to put together.

9 or so pieces, average from what I've seen of a model of this type.

And, I think they paint up real nice as well:

Now, on to more pics after the break!

I'm painting up my little army to be the 3rd company of the 29th Dragoons, and here I've started with the 3rd platoon, as I'll only be painting up 3 platoons and an HQ. The French used the "Deck of Cards" system to determine company and platoon (awesome article explaining it all here) where in the color determined the company and the suit determined the platoon. With 1st Co. being blye, 2nd Co. being white, and 3rd Co. being red. 1st Plt. spades, 2nd Plt. Hearts, 3rd Plt. Diamonds and 4th Plt. being clubs. I choose 3rd company only because I thought the red would stand out best against the camo backround.

Speaking of camo, I'll be painting up each platoon in a different camo style. As different manufacturers would paint different camo on the vehicles I think it's reliable accurate to do so as well as being a good way to break up the painting of 12 of the same vehicle and easily distinguish them on the battlefield.